Baloney Cups with Taters & Cheese: Funky Snacks from Your Past

Since 2006, one discussion in particular has been burning up the Chowhound Home Cooking board. Recipes You've Never Heard of Outside Your Family is an ongoing collection of offbeat things users grew up eating, from funky processed-food mashups of the 1970s to quirky snack obsessions of the 1980s. CHOW’s Chris Rochelle is photo-documenting some especially vivid snacks in the discussion thread, stocking his kitchen photo studio with things like baloney, Velveeta, marshmallows, and Miracle Whip, the building blocks of secret family snacking from the past.

“They’re all about how we remember the way things tasted,” Chris says, “which probably, if tried again, wouldn't have the same resonance. People still make some of these things whenever they’re sad, need comfort, or want to honor people in their lives who are now gone.”

Today’s family-snack excavation comes from Chowhound pedalkat67: “Put bologna in a skillet topped w/ a blop of leftover mashed taters. Fry till the edges of the bologna curl up, making a cup. Top with American cheese slice and yum.” Yum indeed, pedalkat67. Thanks for sharing.

Check back for more snack revivals, and tell us about the weird and delicious snacks lurking in your past.